The Power of Three

by J C Ryan

  “I wouldn’t,” Rex snapped. His eyes never left Usama as he announced. “Anyone else moves and I kill the Lion first and you next.”

  Usama tried to hide his shock and surprise and was all bluster. “Who are you? What is the meaning of this intrusion? One shout from me, and my guards will surround you. You will not leave here alive. Put down your weapon.”

  Despite his brave façade, with one hand, he was signaling the guests to relax and sit down. No doubt the black bore of the P226 no more than eight inches away, pointed directly between his eyes was a powerful persuasion not to test the resolve of the man holding the weapon.

  “I know you,” one of the guests blurted. “You…”

  “Quiet,” Rex and Usama barked almost in unison.

  “Come here.” Rex ordered the speaker.

  The man rose and approached Rex cautiously. With his free hand, Rex pulled out more of the zipties.

  Rex picked a napkin up off the table and stuffed it into Usama’s mouth. Then he ordered the man to do the same to himself and the rest of the guests.

  “Anyone of you try to spit that out and you’re dead.

  “Now, listen carefully to me. You’re now going to tie Usama to his chair, use some of the ties to secure the napkins in his mouth and then you do exactly the same to the others,” Rex ordered. “I’m watching you, tie them up good or you’re dead.”

  The man nodded and started to cross between Rex and Usama, but Rex hissed, “Stop! I will shoot Usama right through you if you try that again.”

  The man leaped sideways like a gazelle. He made a wide swing to avoid getting in the path of the pistol again and apologized to Usama obsequiously as he secured his wrists to the arms of the chair.

  “Ankles too,” Rex directed. He kept his weapon trained on Usama, who glared steadily at him the entire time as his guest secured him and the other two in the same manner.

  “Now take your seat,” Rex directed. When the man was down in his seat, Rex walked over and coldcocked him with the butt of his pistol. He placed the pistol on a nearby side table and secured the man to his chair the same as the others, then inspected everyone’s wrists and ankles more closely. When he was satisfied they were secure, he picked up the Sig Sauer again and in quick succession tapped each of them behind the ear. There. They’d be out for the few minutes he needed to take care of the guards outside.

  He went back to the observation room to have a quick look on the monitors to see where the guards were. He went out the front door, finding Digger ensconced behind a large pot, alert to the approach of any of the guards.

  “Good boy!” Rex stage-whispered. “Stay. Guard.”

  Leaving Digger in charge of keeping anyone out, Rex went after the roaming guards. It took him less than three minutes to take them down one by one and drag the bodies into alcoves and behind landscaping to hide them.

  The gate guards were last. Rex couldn’t remember a time when he’d killed so many enemies face-to-face in such a short space of time. He felt no regret. Every one of them had chosen to work with Usama, who was both a drug lord, and in Rex’s opinion, a terrorist not only by virtue of the harm his product did but also by the money from his product going into the coffers of terrorists.

  Rex had just killed the first of the gate guards when he became aware of a commotion at the front of the house. He ran, crouched and silent, his pistol at the ready, to the front of the house and discovered Digger growling at the throat of a terrified gate guard. A quick survey of the scene told him the story. The guard had approached the front door, and Digger had taken him down. The man’s right hand was torn and bloody, and a Russian MP-412 REX revolver lay a few inches out of his reach.

  Fortunately, the guard hadn’t managed to get a shot off. Digger obviously got the drop on his man and also managed to keep him relatively quiet at the same time.

  “Good job, buddy,” he said to Digger in English.

  The guard tried to beg in English. “Please…” A vicious growl from Digger stopped him, and he tried to scream and pray but the sounds were muffled. Rex raised the gun to shoot him in the head, but Digger was in the way.

  Then the guard withdrew a knife from under his clothes. The man must have realized he was going to die in any event, so in a desperate last effort he could try to kill the beast on top of him.

  The thought of the right circumstances and giving the “kill” command flashed through Rex’s brain, but he never got to it.

  Digger must have seen the knife coming out — the man’s last wail was cut off as Digger ripped his throat out. The knife dropped out of the guard’s hand.

  Digger was unhurt.

  Rex let out a breath of relief.

  “Let’s go in and play good cop, bad cop, buddy,” Rex said. He had some pointed questions to ask Usama.

  24

  Outskirts of Kabul, Afghanistan, 10:30 p.m., June 24

  REX SMILED FOR the first time since the night of the explosion that had killed his friends. He’d been given a mission to break up a party that was never going to take place. Now he had a party that was taking place, and he was going to not just break it up – he was going to demolish it.

  He set Digger to guard the front door while he waited for his host and the other guests to wake up from their short nap. Usama’s head must have been a bit harder than the others, because he was the first to come to.

  “Welcome back,” Rex said coldly. He called Digger to come in. The dog’s influence might loosen their tongues.

  Usama snarled at him.

  Digger took it personally and returned the favor with a teeth-baring growl.

  Usama’s eyes went wide as he noticed the dog. “You dare to bring that filthy beast into my house?” he raged. “I will kill you and feed that dog your entrails before I kill it.”

  Rex almost grinned. “You’re welcome to try.” Without another word, he shot Usama in the kneecap.

  His howl of pain brought the others around, and Rex treated them to the same — a bullet through the knee. In honor of his fallen buddy, he was using Trevor’s pistol.

  It took some time for the men’s screams and moans to wane down to a level where he could talk to them.

  “That was only to get your attention,” he announced. “I am going to ask you questions and you will answer them. I hope it’s not necessary to tell you what’s going to happen if you lie to me?” He didn’t wait for responses. “Let’s talk about who you work with in the US.”

  Bewildered looks from the guests told him they had no idea who he was talking about. Usama merely glared at him without answering.

  Knowing these bastards wouldn’t survive the night, Rex thought he would get the information he wanted a bit quicker if he took some time to give them a little background information. So, he explained who he was and why he was there. He went on at length about the men killed in the explosion and that they were his friends. When he explained that he was not killed with the others, despite the fact that he was present at the time, he made sure it hinted at some kind of supernatural powers. He went on to explain how he and Digger had tracked down the bombers and learned of Usama’s involvement, putting a bit of a paranormal spin on Digger’s abilities, as well.

  Now and then he peered at each man in turn and assessed their pain and fear levels. They had all grown quiet except for a moan now and then. They were losing blood, not so much that they were in danger of bleeding out, but almost certainly enough to make them worry about it. All but Usama were beginning to shift as much as their bindings would allow. When Rex decided they were sufficiently warmed up to talk in spite of their fear of Usama, he began to question them in earnest.

  “What route do your products take to the US? How about yours?” he asked two of them in turn.

  The first shrugged.

  Rex shot him in his other knee. “Haven’t I told you, you have to answer? You can’t pass on a question.” He glanced at the third man, who was staring at Digger and trembling uncontrollably. Digger’s eyes were fi
xed on his, as well.

  “Yours?” Rex prompted.

  “Golden Crescent,” he blurted.

  Hmm, the route to western China into the Xinjiang Province.

  “Thank you,” Rex said. Then he shot the second man he’d asked in his other knee. “Change of rules. Whoever is first to answer doesn’t get shot.”

  Rex was pointedly ignoring Usama. He knew the leader would have the most answers, and he knew he’d get none of them while the other men were alive. Their blood was going to ruin Usama’s expensive Persian rug before he’d get anything out of the leader, but watching his men die slowly and painfully in front of his eyes might loosen his tongue when the time came. Meanwhile, he intended to extract retribution from these men. He pulled out his KA-Bar. “Or cut,” he added to his previous rule.

  From that point he slowly but steadily got the information out of them. It could have gone a bit quicker if he didn’t have to deal with the situation where he had to convince them that they had more to fear from him than from Usama. In the end he’d built up the picture of what had resulted in the deaths of the Phoenix team. His predations on their drug trade activities had hit these men and others in the most tender parts of their anatomies – their wallets. They told him that they had petitioned Usama to do something to stop the destruction of their business.

  Despite a few more bullets and cuts, they had no more information about what Usama had done, other than what he’d told them, which was that his friends in America would see to it that whoever was doing the damage would be stopped.

  By the time he’d extracted that paltry information, he’d done major damage to the bodies of the men he questioned. Now their urine, as well as their blood, stained the carpet. Too bad. The carpet was worth far more than all three of their iniquitous lives put together. He finished them off, with a bullet to the head each, without pity. His contribution to improvement of the human gene pool and depollution of the planet.

  He was sure each of them left this mortal plane with the certain knowledge that they were not going to meet seventy-two, or seven, or two, or any virgin. Digger’s presence at the time they departed would have meant to them that they were going straight to hell to be tortured for eternity. Rex had only introduced them to what they’d suffer in that place.

  Usama, however, would be a tougher nut to crack. He had demonstrated he wasn’t superstitious and regarded Digger as nothing more than a filthy creature to be despised. If Digger knew Usama’s opinion of him, though, he appeared unbothered about it. A hand gesture from Rex commanded him to sit in front of Usama and ‘threaten’. He was doing his best imitation of a vicious killer when Rex pulled up a chair, sat no more than two feet from Usama’s knees, and leveled Trevor’s pistol at his healthy knee.

  “Now,” he said. “Let’s get serious. I want names. I want phone numbers. While we’re at it, I want combinations to your safes, passwords to your accounts, everything.”

  “You will kill me one way or the other. Why should I make it easy for you?” Usama sneered.

  “Oh, only because that will make it easier for you,” Rex replied. “You saw what I did to your guests. Are you so brave that you’ll let me cut you into tiny pieces, one by one, until you die without telling me anything? I don’t think so.”

  “Whether it’s painful or not, I’m going to die in any event. You threaten me with this filthy dog, but I do not fear him.”

  Rex didn’t reply. He got up, went outside, and dragged in the body of the man whose throat was a bloody, mangled mess. He dropped the corpse next to the three dead guests.

  “This guard of yours thought he could stab the dog with a knife. Only one word from me will make him rip out your throat just like this man’s.

  “I’ll get the information from your computers if not from you. So, you choose. Tell me what I want to know and get a nice clean bullet through the heart. Or stay stubborn, and the last breath you take will be swallowed by the dog before it gets to your lungs. Which will it be?”

  Usama stared at the ruined throat of his guard and stared again at Digger. At that moment, his demeanor changed. Rex could see the change. Maybe it was because Usama also believed in an afterlife and virgins awaiting him in paradise but knew that if killed by a dog he had no hope whatsoever to enter that erotic realm. Within a few seconds Usama the Lion’s name would have been more appropriate had it been ‘Kitten’.

  He slumped and told Rex the first truly useful thing he’d heard all night.

  “My contact in America is Winston Reginald Hathaway.”

  Rex had heard the name. The man was a New York socialite as far as he knew. Hearing the name in connection with a major drug operation was jarring, but he didn’t yet know the whole story. However, there was not much that would shock or surprise him about how low some people would go for wealth and prestige.

  Slowly, over the course of three more hours, he put it together with Usama’s reluctant cooperation. After only a few names had been mentioned, Rex knew he’d need to write it all down or record it. The sheer size of the conspiracy was astounding, reaching from the highest levels of government to low-level military NCOs both in Afghanistan and at home.

  “You have this recorded on your computer, yes?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “Show me.” Rex grabbed Usama’s chair from behind, tilted it to its back legs, and dragged him to his office. The man showed no emotion when they passed the body of the servant Rex had dispatched earlier. When they reached the office, Rex saw it was more like a base of international operations. Several monitors were attached to each of three computers, two desktop models and a laptop. He positioned Usama within reach of one and cut the zipties off his hands with his KA-BAR.

  “Watch where you place your hands. One twitch that makes me believe you’re about to destroy the evidence, and I feed you to the dog.”

  Usama nodded and logged on to the desktop with the keyboard in front of him. He explained the two stationary computers weren’t linked. One contained falsified business records for the benefit of the government. Not that the government ever bothered him, as he was their most important partner in some dealings that extracted more taxes from his competitors and underlings in return for his information. On that hard drive, nothing of value to Rex would be found, he explained.

  Rex didn’t believe him. He would check it all out later.

  The desktop he was accessing contained the real records, and it was periodically backed up to the laptop, which contained not only Usama’s real business records, but also dozens of names with contact information.

  “Run a manual backup right now,” Rex ordered. He’d have to translate everything, but that he could do at his leisure. He’d take the hard drives from all the computers in addition to the laptop.

  When the backup was in progress, he nudged Usama in the back of the neck with his pistol. “The logins and passwords.”

  “All in a small journal. In the drawer, there,” Usama said, pointing with his chin at an antique-looking side table.

  Rex pulled Usama’s chair out of reach of the computers and left Digger guarding him, while he went to search the drawer. He found a little book, about six by four inches, bound with supple leather and containing about twenty lined pages, filled with website addresses printed in neat Latin letters, with Arabic passwords. When the backup was finished, Rex randomly selected a few of the entries and tried them on the laptop. The results satisfied him that the journal was legitimately a record of all Usama’s login information to hundreds of sites, including Dark Web and Deep Web locations.

  “I have done all you asked. You now know everything I know. You will be honorable and kill me quickly,” Usama said. His voice was surprisingly firm.

  Rex said. “Not time yet. Who set up the ambush on my team? Was it your people acting alone?”

  “Of course not,” Usama said, growing insolent again. “We did not know who you were. We required the help of Hathaway. I understand he put pressure on a senator, who passed
it on to the CIA.”

  Rex’s shock and disgust was complete. The CIA? They knew it was a setup? “Who in the CIA?”

  Usama shrugged. “I don’t know. I only deal with Hathaway. Who in the CIA would’ve given the orders to your commander?”

  The ambitious Director or one of his sycophant deputies. Rex had wondered, and now he knew. The corruption was at all levels of the government, and it had cost the lives of innocent men. He and Trevor, okay, they had been working without specific orders. But Frank, his old friend, and the other five – they’d known nothing of any of it until Frank figured it out. They weren’t involved, and they didn’t deserve what had happened to them. For that matter, neither did Trevor. It was obvious the perversion had spread so far and so deep into the US government it was almost traumatizing. How many more innocent lives had been lost and would still be lost because of those malevolent bunch of self-serving bureaucrats in DC?

  Usama broke into his thoughts. He tried to justify his actions. “You must understand. Our livelihoods were threatened. You were destroying our businesses. We had to do something to stop you.”

  That comment almost pushed Rex to shoot the man right there and then. However, he had one more matter to clarify. “You’re saying that the only aim of that explosion was to kill me?”

  “Yes, you. Or rather, the man we were told goes by the names of El Gato or Alshaytan. The Ghost. I take it you are he?”

  Rex didn’t answer, but noted that Usama’s pronunciation of his Spanish nickname, El Gato, the cat, was flawless. Was Usama also in cahoots with the Colombian drug trade? He would not be surprised, and he didn’t need to ask now. It would be in the laptop’s records or found within the murky waters of the Deep Web. The more important question, which he didn’t ask, was how did Usama come to know his pseudonyms? Had Brandt told one of Usama’s co-conspirators? Had Brandt told Usama himself?